


Halfway Through Summer

by florencedrunk



Series: The Changing of the Seasons [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-04
Updated: 2017-04-04
Packaged: 2018-10-14 12:03:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10536084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/florencedrunk/pseuds/florencedrunk
Summary: They move him to an apartment at the Avengers Tower, which is not really an apartment as much as a whole floor. A. Whole. Floor."How rich is Stark, exactly?" he asks Sam as they make their way to the living room."Stinking," Sam replies, flopping down on the couch. "So, how are you feeling?""I have no idea, to be honest," he says. "Better?"





	

They move him to an apartment at the Avengers Tower, which is not really an apartment as much as a whole floor. A. Whole. Floor.

"How rich is Stark, exactly?" he asks Sam as they make their way to the living room.

"Stinking," Sam replies, flopping down on the couch. "So, how are you feeling?"

"I have no idea, to be honest," he says. "Better?"

"Better's good. Just take it easy, yeah?"

He nods, looking out the massive floor-to-ceiling windows. On the other side of the glass, Manhattan is roaring as loudly as ever— it's strange how New York seems to be the only thing he recognizes. Sure, it changed a lot, but it feels like its heart is the same. Then again, for him, the heart of the city always had a name and a face. "I still can't leave, right?" he asks.

"Not yet," Sam answers. "The lower levels of the Tower are full of civilians, and, as far as the rest of the world is concerned, Bucky Barnes is still dead."

"Makes sense," he says. After all, as far as he's concerned, Bucky Barnes _is_ dead.

"Where would you go, if you could leave?"

"I don't know," he lies.

 

* * *

 

"CAN I BE OF ANY ASSISTANCE, SIR?" the disembodied voice says. Tony warned him about this, but having a British guy calling for him from the ceiling is still a rather unsettling experience.

"Hello?" he calls back, raising his voice. "I'm sorry, I don't know what to call you."

"MY NAME IS JARVIS, SIR."

"Nice to... meet you, JARVIS, I'm— I'm not sure who I am, to be honest."

"MY FACIAL RECOGNITION PROGRAM IDENTIFIES YOU AS JAMES BUCHANAN BARNES."

"Yeah, that's the problem," he mutters. "I was trying to make this thing work," he says, then, waving around the tablet Stark gave him.

"THE INTERNET CONNECTION SEEMS STABLE, SIR, AND THE DEVICE IS FUNCTIONAL. WHAT ARE YOU HAVING TROUBLE WITH?"

"I want to know what's wrong with bananas."

 

* * *

 

Stark had a camera installed outside the apartment, streaming directly to the tablet. So, he sees Steve the moment he steps out of the elevator, and then watches him make his way towards the door, only to stop a few inches away from it, with his arm raised, but seemingly no intention to knock. It takes him almost half an hour to do it.

"Bucky—" Steve begins once they're inside.

"It's James," he says. "I prefer James, if you don't mind."

The words just come out of his mouth. He hasn't given it that much of a thought, but he knows that he can't live with the pressure of the man Steve once knew weighing on his shoulders. He knows he's not Bucky Barnes. Not now, maybe not ever.

"No, it's— it's fine," Steve says. "So, _James_ , how are you settling in?"

"I've been on the Internet, a lot — JARVIS has been helping with that."

"Good," Steve says, and silence resumes.

After a few minutes of absolutely nothing, James is seriously contemplating jumping out of a window. He thinks his metal arm should be able to break the glass, and the landing would probably be less painful than this — less awkward, for sure. In an attempt to save the situation, he says the first thing that comes to his mind.

"I ate a banana, earlier—"

"Yeah, I know!" Steve says, interrupting him. "Everyone here thinks I'm insane or something."

"They taste _so_ bad," he continues. "I looked it up on the Internet, and it says that _our_ bananas died out in the 60s or something, so they replaced them with these new gross ones."

"What?"

"But now these new ones are dying out too, I think?" he explains. "So maybe the next ones will be better."

Steve laughs.

"What?" Bucky asks.

"Nothing, you're such a nerd."

"A what?"

"You should look that up too."

 

* * *

 

(That first night, Bucky Barnes lets himself out of his head and into the apartment.

"You decided to give it a shot," he says.

"Don't act like it was your idea."

"But it was," he says, smiling. "You're thinking about telling Steve about how you feel about him, aren't you?"

"I don't like lying to him," James says. "There are so many things he doesn't know."

"It's good, though, that you want him to know all of you."

"Now, I only have to find the courage to actually talk to him."

"You have all the time in the world."

"That's what you thought too, right?" he asks. "Before the war, before the fall...")

 

* * *

 

"I don't understand how I'm supposed to feel about this," he says. On the TV screen, a woman is falling down the longest stairs he's ever seen. Seriously, it's been going on for at least two minutes, now.

"The one who pushed her is her son's fourth wife," Clint starts explaining.

"But before that, she was married to her uncle, who turned out to be her half-brother," Natasha continues.

"And why does she want her dead?" he asks.

"DRAMA!" they both respond.

 

* * *

 

He's had this name stuck in his head for a while, now, but has no idea of where it comes from. He thinks it's someone he used to hate. When he types it in the search bar on his tablet, a long list of results appears, and he presses on the first one.

> Margaret Elizabeth "Peggy" Carter was an agent of the Strategic Scientific Reserve (SSR) during and after World War II, and later became one of the founders of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement & Logistic Division (S.H.I.E.L.D.). Originally a code-breaker working at Bletchley Park, she joined the Special Operations Executive, and then the SSR, following her brother's death. There, she oversaw Project Rebirth, during which she met and befriended the frail Steve Rogers, one of the project's candidates, who later became known as Captain America.

All of once, the memories come back. He remembers her smile, her uniform — always on point — and a red dress. He remembers watching the way Steve looked at her, and the way she was allowed to look back at him.

Peggy Carter is someone he used to be jealous of.

 

* * *

 

Steve shows him a photo of an old lady with silver hair in a messy braid. She's smiling at the camera, next to a man who is looking at her instead of at whoever is taking the picture. On their left, a woman; on their right, a man — his name is James, Steve tells him.

"She seems happy," he says. "Did you meet her?"

"She came to see me right after S.H.I.E.L.D. released me," Steve explains. "We talked about you, actually — and then she gave me this photo."

"She thinks I'm dead."

"She does," Steve says. "But she doesn't have to, you know?"

"You think I should tell her?"

"It depends, I guess," he says. "If she misses you half as much as I did, then, yes, you should."

"As you _did_?"

"That's what I said."

 

* * *

 

(Bucky Barnes tried to love women. Oh, God, how he tried. He didn't mind the kissing, and liked feeling the warmth of a body next to his, but there was always something stopping him. He knew what that was, deep in his heart, but never truly admitted it. It was like having a secret he was trying really hard to keep from himself.

For the Winter Soldier, sex was just another weapon, a means to an end. He hated the taste of someone else's lips on his own, hated the idea of showing his naked body to someone else — not that his body was his own, of course, Hydra was always clear about that.

James sees the picture while he's on his tablet: two men kissing in the middle of a busy street, and no one around saying anything about it. He zooms in on their hands, and his heart stops when he sees identical golden bands around their ring fingers.)

 

* * *

 

Stark shows him the blueprints (are they still called blueprints if they're not blue, or printed?) and waits for a reaction.

"Is this—"

"Yes," he interrupts James. "It's modeled after your right one, and I designed it so that it can be implanted on the juncture you already have, so the whole procedure shouldn't be longer than a couple of hours. And it's a lot lighter, too."

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"You made me a new arm," he says. "Why?"

"'Cause I'm the gadget guy, this is what I do," he responds. "Don't tell the others I said that."

James takes one last look at the screen of the tablet, and then looks at Stark in the eyes.

"But I killed your parents," he says. "I strangled your mother, I felt her exhaling her last breath as I gripped her neck with my hand — _my_ hand, not the one they gave me. You should hate me."

"You keep doing this," Stark says. "I saw the recordings from when you were in the cell. You did the same thing with Cap, and with Wilson, why?"

"Because you forget."

"Forget?"

"You forget who I am — what I am," he explains. "You forget all the people I killed, all the people who suffered because of me. What if I was just playing along? What if I was just tricking you to get out of here?"

"But you aren't," Stark says. "I know you aren't. And you didn't kill my parents, or any of those other people. Hydra killed them. You were just their weapon. And you know what? You managed to escape their control, and that makes you stronger than them, stronger than the Winter Soldier."

James doesn't say anything.

"Now, my lab is ready, and I don't have anything to do all day. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

 

* * *

 

(He's lying down on a table in Tony's lab, and the Winter Soldier comes out of his head and lies next to him.

"You really think this is going to work?" the masked man asks. "You really think you can get rid of me this easily?"

James feels something slithering towards him: it's a tentacle, slimy and scarlet; it's a hand, cold and made of metal. The Soldier seizes him by the neck, raising him several inches from the ground.

The lab disappears, replaced by a cavern made of white bone. Tentacles sprout from the ground and from the ceiling, chaining him to the wall. There are two holes in front of him — eye sockets, he realizes. He's trapped inside his own skull, unable to move as he watches Tony run away from him.

"You're right to be scared," the Soldier's voice echoes. "I'm in control, now.")

 

* * *

 

He wakes up back inside the apartment, tucked in his own bed. His head is hurting, so the first sound he makes is a moan of pain.

"Good morning," Natasha says from the corner of the room. "Or night, I suppose."

"What happened?"

"Tony tried to take your arm off, but it backfired and you went all murder-bot on him."

"Fuck— did I hurt him?"

"No," she says. "Well, not as bad as Steve did when he found out what happened."

"Steve?"

"He was so pissed, it wasn't pretty. You're lucky he had to leave for a mission," she says, giving a look to her wristwatch. "Speaking of, I need to leave too."

"How did Tony stop me?" he asks just before she reaches the door.

"He didn't," she says. "I did — JARVIS called me down to the lab, and I hit you really hard in the head."

"The head?"

"Cognitive recalibration," she says. "Ask Clint about that one."

"Thank you, then."

"Don't mention it. And I did owe you one, right?"

"What?"

"That time in Kiev, do you remember?"

He remembers Kiev, and he remembers what came after: Karpov having him tied up to the ceiling of his cell by his wrists; the whip burning as it hit his back; the girl with the red hair bringing him water when no one was there. He remembers she was the reason he was being punished in the first place.

"Do _you_?" he asks back.

"Barely," she says. "I don't really know how much is true and how much they put into my head. I didn't even really remember your face before I saw you in DC."

"Who else knows?" he asks. "About us— about the Red Room?"

"Not Steve," she says, cutting to the point. "You can tell him if you want."

"Why haven't you?"

"After you shot Fury, when Steve told me he'd seen you, I understood it was the Winter Soldier we were after, but I had no idea the Winter Soldier was Bucky Barnes."

"But after—"

"After, I was bleeding out from where you shot me in the shoulder," she says, with a smile on her face. "And then I had to infiltrate the World Security Council to make sure S.H.I.E.L.D. fell. And then, you were here, and I thought that telling Steve was as much your choice as it was mine. Or they were all just excuses, I don't know."

"I want to tell him," James says. "I want to tell him everything."

"Then do it. I'm fine with it," she says, turning to leave again.

"Did I— did I love you?" he asks. He has to know.

"Maybe," she says. "Maybe I did too. Or maybe not. Does it really matter, now?"

"No, I guess it doesn't," he says. "Goodnight, Natalia."

"Goodnight, James."

 

* * *

 

(He dreams of red hair and hurried kisses shared in dark corridors. He dreams of broad shoulders and blue eyes staring into his, and of how it would feel to let himself feel.

He dreams of the Winter Soldier, of how easy it was for him. He dreams of Bucky Barnes, looking at himself in the mirror, asking what's wrong with him as some nameless girl calls his name from his bed.

He dreams of Steve. Small, and then big — always beautiful. He dreams of lips pressed on his, and of hands brushing against his body. He dreams, and wishes he could drown in this fantasy.)

 

* * *

 

"Sam, I have a question for you," he says.

"Shoot, buddy."

"I've seen that a lot of things are different now — for the better, mostly, and I was just wondering..."

"Yes?"

"Is it really okay, now, for a woman to be together with another woman? Or a man with a man? I read that they can marry, and stuff?"

"It's way more accepted than it was back then," Sam says. "And there was a Supreme Court case this June that made same-sex marriage legal in all fifty states. Why do you ask?"

"Because I think I might be one of them," he says.

"Of them?"

"The gays."

Sam makes a face — a weird face, like he's feeling a lot of things at the same time. At first, his eyes go wide, and he opens and closes his mouth a few times. He can't seem to get anything out, though, because he starts grinning. Then, for a second, he frowns, and then smiles again.

"That's great, man," he says. "Have you told Steve?"

"What? NO!" he says. "You can't tell him!"

"I won't, don't worry," Sam says, with both hands raised. "But you should, though. He won't mind or anything."

"I can't tell him, not yet," he says. "I'm working on it."

 

* * *

 

("You should listen to Sam," Bucky tells him.

"You mean that I should listen to you," he retorts.

"Hey, it's not my fault if great minds think alike."

"Yeah, and fools seldom differ."

Bucky laughs, and then he starts coughing. He falls down to his knees, screaming in pain. James watches Bucky's skin tearing up as he cries in pain, and a creature coming out of him, spattering red tears everywhere. Then, someone laughs — it's Bucky's voice, his own voice, except it isn't.

"He's right, you know?" the Winter Soldier hisses as he rises. "You should tell your dear Stevie. I'd love to see his face when he realizes how disgusting you are.")

 

* * *

 

The next time he sees Steve, they're both nervous, but for entirely different reasons.

"How did your mission go?" James asks. "Where was it, again?"

"That's confidential, but it went well," Steve says. "And don't think that just because I didn't say anything you're getting away with the mess you and Tony made."

"Don't think _you_ are getting away with what you did to Tony."

"He tried to take off your arm—"

"Because I wanted to," he erupts. "It was my choice."

"Why didn't you tell anyone, then?"

"Because I knew you would have stopped me."

"That worked out well, didn't it?" Steve asks. "What if Natasha hadn't been there?"

"I don't know, okay?" he confesses. "I just wanted the arm gone — still do, obviously. Look, I'm sorry."

"You don't need to apologize — for anything," Steve says, letting out a sigh. "I just really don't like for you to put yourself in danger. I was really scared when they told me what happened, that's why I attacked Tony."

"That doesn't excuse you," James says. "But, at least, now you know what's like to be me."

"What?"

"Have you forgotten that I spent the first twenty years of my life trying to keep you out of trouble?"

"That's not true."

"Really? The moment I let you out of my sight, you got yourself recruited by some German scientist who injected you with a magic serum."

"Wow, that's a lot of details," Steve says. "Do you actually remember all of this?"

"Mostly," he says, shrugging. "Sam and JARVIS have been helping me fill in the gaps."

"Sam told me you two have been talking a lot lately. Never said about what, though."

"It's confidential."

Steve gives him a look, and they both start laughing. For a second, hearing that sound, he forgets they're not in 1942, anymore.

"He's a good man — Sam, I mean," James says. "I'm glad you have him, and the others, too."

"So am I. And I'm glad you have them too."

James really wants to hug Steve. He wants to kiss him, to be honest, but he knows the time's not right — he's not sure if it'll ever be — and hugging looks to him like the next best thing. He takes a step forward and puts his arms around Steve's torso. The other man is surprised, and for a second they both stop breathing. Then, Steve hugs back, holding him close and hooking his head on James' shoulder.

James remembers hugging a way smaller Steve, right before leaving for Europe. And he remembers the next time he hugged him, in Austria, when he thought an angel was calling his name, only to realize it was something much better. Those times, it felt like they were trying to say something without speaking, only through touch. Right now, they are embracing each other just for the sake of it, and it feels like the best thing ever.

"I know I told you a lot of bad things, before," James begins, whispering the words. "And there's still a lot of things that you don't know about me, about the person I am now, but I will tell you everything, I swear."

"You don't owe me anything," Steve responds. "I'm just happy you're here."

"But I want to tell you. I need to."

"I want to tell you something too," Steve says, pulling away. "About the mission — I can't tell you where I went, but I can tell you who I went there for."

"I'm listening."

"He's someone I fought together with a couple of years ago, in the Battle of New York. He knows a thing or two about fighting his inner self. I told him about you, and he said he wanted to speak to you."

"Okay?"

"He also told me of someone who might help you, someone who helped him, but I wanted to show you something before deciding what to do."

"When did you become the cautious one?"

Steve seems to have an answer ready for that, but he bites it down and says, "I'll show you something, and then you can decide. Deal?"

"Deal."

Steve takes a deep breath, before turning to the ceiling. "JARVIS, show us everything we have on the Scarlet Witch."

**Author's Note:**

> If you have any questions, or just want to say hi, you can find me [here](http://florencedrunk.tumblr.com) on tumblr.


End file.
